Article: “Y560 – Repair of hinges” by Martin Balog

Mr. Marting Balog covers one of the most sensitive problems of Lenovo Y560 Notebook – poor assembling. If to be more specific – broken (yes, mechanically BROKEN) hinges problem. And here is the fully detailed artice which is in my humble opinion is best manual you can find around the World Wide Web regarding this issue:

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Dear Lenovo Y560 community.

I believe that many (if not all of us) share the same problem. It is the very poor design of hinges on our notebooks. Especially the left one. Personally I have two Y560´s at my home. Hinge on the first one broke after 6 months, another after just three months. I decided to take responsibility into my own hands instead of the Lenovo service and tried to repair the hinges by myself.This tutorial describes what I did to repair them. If you decide to follow it remember that you may loose your warranty, depends on how handy you are 🙂Basically there are two stages of damage to the hinges. The first – light – one is very easy to repair and the risks are minimal. The heavier damage is more serious and requires additional effort. Personally I have heavier damage on left hinge and lighter on right one. Opening and closing the laptop is however better than when it was new.Let´s get on with the steps:

1. Turn off or hibernate the notebook and unplug the cable.

2. Turn the notebook over and unscrew the following screws.

3. After you unscrew them, be very careful with any movement, as nothing holds the screen now. I recommend opening up display to at least 90° before unscrewing the screws “Hinge 1&2”.

4. Take out the dvd-rom to gain access to the clip on the picture below and unclamp it.

5. Unscrew 4 screws located under the battery:

6. Gently turn notebook over and here comes the tricky part where you have to be handy. There are several clips (same as the clip in step 4.) that have to be released and you have to be careful to not break them. I took it apart five times, so far none is broken… Be careful anyway.

7. When you are successful, flip the panel over the keyboard. You have to be careful with the touch buttons´ data cables. If you wish to gain better access, you can unplug them (turn the mini black plastic bar outside and pull the data cable out). At this point you can see the extent of damage. The circles show the points where the hinges are fixed.

8. On the picture above, the repair has already been made. On the right (the lighter damage) there is nothing more than a loose matrix (formerly inside broken panel, which you can see) tightened on a screw. Be very careful however, if you tighten it too strong, it may break the bottom which holds the screw. Process of tightening the matrix:

If you are worried that it may unscrew itself over the time, you may be right. You can use a glue that you place on a screw, then tighten the matrix over it… BUT do not use superglue, because you may not be able to unscrew it and the warranty is gone. I used some kind of a silicon glue, they used something similar on original screws (orange or green covering).

9. If you are “lucky” enough and you break the bottom (or it´s already broken), you´ll have to go with the plan B. Plan B covers finding a screw that is long and narrow enough to get through the holes and of course a proper matrix.

The procedure is exactly the same, even with a glue and this time you can tighten it properly without any fear of breaking it. There is nothing to break at this point. It may be quite hard to find a proper screw with the matrix but you may be lucky. I found mine at local computer shop – they are regular desktop pc chasis screws, the longest ones of them. They had proper matrixes at local hardware shop.

After you are done with the tightening, you can try to move the display to see the improvement in the movement. If you are satisfied, you can start putting everything back together. You also have the unique chance to clean the keyboard. It is only held on its place by the panel, so it should be easy for you. When you finally decide to put things as they were before, remember not to tighten all the remaining screws too much, as there is no need for it. You´ve seen how fragile the construction is…

That is pretty much it. It´s no big deal, however not everybody is confident with taking apart their new notebook. Remember that if you do it, you are doing it on your own risk.

In the situation where you are forced to send your notebook to the customer service because of any other reason, you may have to remove “the plan B”. In my opinion, you don´t have to worry about “the lighter solution”.

I hope that this tutorial will be useful to somebody and I will be available to answer any questions you might have.

36 Responses

Wow! This article is a godsend for me! I recently having been having some crashing problems with my y560, but after some troubleshooting it seems like its tied to the broken left hinge (if i move the screen physically it freezes and crashes). Will that problem go away with this repair? Also, it seems like the head on one of the screws under the battery hood is broken off (It came this way. any suggestions on how to remove & replace it?

Yes, the data cable is on the left side, it could be that the broken hinge is interfering with it…Hard to tell if the fixing the hinge will help, you know the cable may be already broken. And don´t worry about the screws under the battery – I´ve lost 2 of them 🙂

I used my laptop for about a half year with broken hinges. I decided to fix it, using your guide. I can only advice two things: dont EVER buy a lenovo y560 and if your hinges are broken, fix it asap! The vram is located directly above a part of the left hinge. If it is broken, it will scratch and hit one of the chips as you open and close the lid. I learned it the hard way, the hinge broke my chip, its still working, but sometimes it cant boot (funky graphics, when windows tries to initialize the gpu). Maybe its the soldering, not the body of the chip itself. Anyway, thanks for the guide, it helped me a lot, now my lid is as good as new! 🙂

I´m glad I could help you :)You are right about the hinges. The fix is important, and I am strongly convinced that EVERYBODY who owns anY560 has at least one hinge broken. Very poor constructionmildly said…

yaaaa right very poor built quality ,
i have baught my y560 one and a half years back during it i faced the issues of video card and hinge ..both of them twice but it was repaired by customer care during the warrenty period ..now again my right hinge is broken and whenever i switch the graphic to ati i always pray to GOd to save video card………..

Thanks so much for all the pictures and info.I also have the hinge problem opened and fixed the simple right hand side but I am unable to find the screw and the matrix.Is there a place online you can suggest me that I can buy one please?Also,thanks because of this my AMD graphics started to work now.Pls help if you can.I did find only a small chasis screw..don’t know what exactly I need.Thank you.

unfortunately I cannot directly help you with this. I was just lucky that I was able to find the right screws… You´ll have to ask in ironmongeries, model shops and PC shops (services). If you won´t be able to find any, you can drill through that screw hole and you will surely be able to find some bigger screws that will fit. This is rather crude however, do it only as a matter of last resort. Good luck and let us now the outcome.

Hey, for people that are having the crashing problem.. It could be the cable, or once the hinge becomes undone.. it actually presses up against the memory for the graphics card (right underneath the left speaker) that will cause a bunch of weird lines and the computer to crash

Same issue as others, left hinge broken, also pinching monitor cable and shorting out or locking up. Good directions Martin, thanks. I ended up also “trimming” the plastic backing next to the left hinge to prevent further damage to the monitor cables, which wasn’t too drastic.

Thanks Martin Sir
My problem is that my laptop lenovo ideapad y560 is not getting charged from the main supply tough it was working fine on battery till the battery was charged.now the battery is not getting charged from the maIN SUPPLY. MY CHARGER IS NOT DAMAGED BUT ITS GIVING SHOCK. I CALLED THE LENOVO GUY HE SAID THAT IF I WILL OPEN THE BODY THEN THE BODY WILL BREAK COZ BECAUSE THERE WILL BE HINGES PROBLEM, WILL THIS REALLY HAPPEN AND CAN I GET SOME SOLUTION TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM
REGARDS

I´ve succesfully repaired hinges in Lenovo G770 using nearly the same technique described in this article. Although disassembly is more difficult – you have to unscrew practicaly every screw from the bottom of the laptop and optionaly drill additional holes for extra screws…

I am having trouble getting the top plate off (that covers the speakers). I followed your pictures and instructions and thanks by the way – they were very easy to follow! But anyway, I tried and tried to separate/lift this plate off to no avail. I didn’t dare be too forceful with it as it is quite fragile, as you know. Anyway, I ended up snapping the plate back down and re-assembling it without damaging anything. Only the ends and top edge of the plate were loose. Something was holding the plate on along the top edge of the ‘F’ keys. I tried to jiggle and pull every which way. I felt SO close to getting to the hinges. I was pretty bummed after spending an hour on it w/o being able to complete the fix. Any suggestions?

If you look closely at pictures where the plate is upside down,
you´ll notice what kind of clips hold it down above the F-keys (L-shaped).
You can also try if you cannot see one of the clips when you gently
raise the lid just under the speaker covering. You might be able to
help yourself with some tool (screwdriver, etc).

Franky, you might end up with one of them broken – that is always the possibility, however I don´t think that there is some other way than to forcefully remove the lid… Well, forcefully souds too harsh… Use gentle force 😀

Tried it again this morning, and yes, it worked loose. However, i was still not able to replace the hinge. It’s flopping around loose in its bracket and i can’t see what should be fastening it down correctly. It doesn’t look like a broken hinge, both right and left metal ‘block’ pieces are not fastened to any plastic part on the chassie. The long thin strips of metal from those must be embedded inside the monitor housing. This was much more complicated that I imagined. Any assistance you might gleen for me would be hugely appreciated. I am also having trouble contecting wirelessly since I took things apart and put them back together – don’t know if that is cause/effect in something i did, but at least I can connect with a hard wire DSL. Thank you, again!
Michael B

wow thanks for this article martin, you’re a lifesaver!
ive been having the crashing problem when you move the screen for quite some time now…I got around it by using an HDMI cable to an alternate screen and not moving the laptop at all.

finally decided to consult the net and found this page…i ended up finding both hinges broken through the bottom…i jury rigged a solution and its good so far. Im still fairly stunned at the hinge design…what were they thinking?

Well, I could understand it this design lasted for at least 2 years… but mine broke after several months, another just after 2 months… thats just crazy 😀
It would be much less profitable for them if notebooks lasted for 5 or more years, so they are forced to do such things. Luckily we are handy enough 🙂

Hi Martin,
After initially describing my problem, I opened my hinge area back up to try and see if/where the wifi cables could be pinched, since my wifi reception went WAY down. I was able to make small adjustments in the guides for the cables but then saw that all four plastic hinge screw bases were broken off. Now my monitor sort of ‘floats’ on its hinges. To open the monitor, I have to carefully hold my fingers over the left speaker and, push down while slowly opening the monitor so the L hinge doesn’t pop up the plate (forget what that plate is called). I think what happened is that the hinges started seazing up, and put too much strain on the nubs they were attached to. Anyway, I’m over that and ready to move forward with possible fixes such as getting a new base and replacing it. This would involve a lot of labor putting all of the computer into the new base, yes? Has anyone done this or had it done, and if so, what was your experience afterward? For the time being, I will be using my laptop at one desk, leaving the monitor open, and using an ethernet cable instead of wifi.

Thank you, Martin. A little (or in your case, a Lot) of experience and perspective with this problem can really go a long way in solving the workings of bad hinge mechanism design. Glad I ran it by you before going ‘down the rabbit hole’!

Martin,
Do you recommend adjusting / slightly loosening / cleaning the springs of the hinges? Have you had any experience whether this helps take tension off the base when opening and closing the monitor?

Thanks a lot for thiese insights. They helped me a lot. Finally I used 3×10 mm screws. The bolts I warmed up and melted in the plastic on the bottom of the case. The screws I drove in from the inside… It’s really well attached now. I taped the screws with a tiny bit of stretch tape..to keep them in.

Mike, the idea of the 3 x 10 mm screws melting them into the bottom of the basis is diabolical genius! I think I’ll have to give this one a try. It may not solve my lost wifi / pinched or pulled wifi wire, but I have little to lose in trying this fix out for now. Thanks for keeping on this issue, and especially for sharing it!
Kind Regards,
Michael B